Emblaze Else Intuition Loadded with Beautiful Linux OS

In the battle for smartphone supremacy, we inevitably hear from the same few names over and over again. We hear about iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Symbian… but what about the team at Access? They used to champion the Palm OS, but we are now looking at a beautiful Linux OS in the new Emblaze Else Intuition smartphone.

The result of a partnership between Access and Emblaze Mobile, the Else Intuition (that’s Else and not Elise) takes on the now familiar large touchscreen form factor. It also gets specs that are about par for the course, loading up with GSM (quad or tri), GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 16GB internal memory, 5-megapixel autofocus camera, and a TI OMAP 3430 processor.

The real star of the show, however, is the Access Linux Platform 3.0. This is meant to provide added flexibility and configurability. You’ll notice that the user interface is comprised of a semi-circular “wheel” to access the different functions on the multitouch display. The capacitive screen is 3.47-inches with a 480 x 854 pixel resolution.

I think the UI looks great and is very “clean” in its presentation. We’re not bombarded with endless widgets, but everything seems easily accessible. I’m assuming that the wheel can be flipped to the other side for lefties, but I can’t say for sure.

There are tons of deals from the Amazon Appstore that will be offered starting now and throughout the holiday shopping season. They say that they will have "hundreds of titles that are eitehr free... or available between 50-90% off" the regular price.

Case in point, if you head over to the Google Play Store right now, you'll find that Google is celebrating all Cyber Weekend with discounts on all sorts of content. This includes many popular apps and games

If you were hoping to save yourself some cash as you brave the Black Friday shopping crowds, you'll want to go somewhere other than the official Apple Stores.

http://cyberfish.110mb.com Jake

Yes, ALP is a great-looking mobile OS, but, sadly, it has much less software developers, and therefore less support than even Android has.

netgazing

The interface looks like a genuine improvement over existing interaction models. I hope it is as intuitive to learn for the average person as the videos show, and we don’t easily end up clicking the wrong submenu, app, etc. There’s nothing worse than menus that try to be super efficient but cause more user experience problems by taking too many ‘shortcuts’. I hope the Else Intuition is intuitive, else it’ll just be a beautiful but clumsy interface.

From an aesthetic perspective – it’s beautiful, but I’d hope to see how the navigation works with theming/skins or just a detailed photographic wallpaper behind it, which is the type of personalization most users want. Text instead of graphical icons for applications is quick, but again, if a new interaction model is being pushed, and it’s meant to be the best, let’s not throw out the past – some ‘pretty graphics’ in the way of icons, wallpapers, applications themes, etc should be possible without competing against the beautiful wheel navigation system. I understand the advantages of text, but I want both worlds – text and graphics.

If this balance could be found, then I can imagine this interface being used as a replacement for the Dock in OSX or any OS and used on a tablet, laptop, to desktop combined with a touch-pad or gesture responsive mouse.

If it is as easy to learn to control as it appears to be powerful in reducing all menus to this central menu wheel, then BRILLIANT! The resulting freed up screen space, decoupled media, etc really are nice innovations for an OS, giving the user more freedom to mix up their media and use it as they like. There seems to be a very nice nodal/relational/graph model underlying the user interaction model, that almost creates some new emergent functions from it for the user to experiment with. But as useful as they are, I wonder if they can go beyond the OS and the core apps and integrate/influence third party apps.

And that’s the one issue that would prevent me from buy this phone. It’s interaction model and OS appears near optimal in design, and the hardware features are certainly impressive, not to forget it has a very nice large screen. But how does it interact with third party applications, developers, etc?

Or to sum, I’ll only buy one over the iPhone – if third party apps appear to increasingly be available. Sigh, that’s how the iPhone keeps me interested – apps, apps, App(ALL)! I’m not dismissing the lack of widget clutter that the Else has, I just like the functionality extension model the iPhone has via apps. I’m sure the next iPhone will bring multitasking in some manner and some UI changes to enable this, and put it more on par with Palm’s WebOS, which shows a nice ‘middle way’ interaction model. But I can live without major UI changes like the ‘wheel’ in return for apps that add functionality.

So, other than some graphical personalization that I’d like to see available, including the use of graphical icons for applications, which shouldn’t break/compete against the radial menu concept, a decent app store is a must to attract me and probably most iPhone/smartphone users.

This OS and phone have a lot of potential, but we need to see more of the ‘standard stuff’ to be convinced it’s got what it takes to draw users to a different interaction model.

Does anyone know what its virtual keyboard is like? It would be cool if it had a radial one in landscape mode! Much like the printing part of old typewriters, so 3-5 fingers could be used to type. I’ve seen hardware versions of one hand typing pads, but can’t remember the name. A virtual equivalent would be the icing on the cake!

They claim this phone is different. I see only UI difference and that's it. Overall it the same Symbian, Android or any other mobile OS. The interface is a real Eye-Candy and it will attract many people. But I think it will get boring fast.

the menu is a really user-friendly idea! the phone comes with a screen which is the biggest right now in the market but keeps the size of phone small and thin. with other practical functions. I am sure it's going to be a succeed.

Gabriel

True, the fan-shaped menu is super comfortable! Very efficient. The device's features are not bad either: a 3.5-inch, 854 x 480 capacitive touchscreen WiFi/3G/Bluetooth/GPS, built in accelerometers, and a 5 MP camera. As far as radios go, it’s stuffed: WCDMA/HSDPA/GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900MHz and Tri-band 850/1900/2100MHz. I think this device has the potential to provide real competition to some of the bigger names in the industry.